The current neoliberal impetus in higher education has effects on all aspects of academic life, including professional academic development. These effects include increasing workloads and more casualisation of academic work, particularly teaching and a greater emphasis on quantification of scholarly outputs. The Slow movement provides an alternative way for valuing
This article explores the well-being of three academics from different higher education institutions and disciplines, as they engage in professional academic development (PAD) courses using technology. A collaborative autoethnographic approach is applied to reflect on our professional development experience. The higher education landscape is shifting to a cloud-based ICT infrastructure, opening up multiple educational opportunities in teaching and learning. Lecturers in higher education institutions (HEIs) are required to use a range of new technological tools and applications and engage in new learning methodologies. This is modelled in professional academic development courses, which integrate technology and digital tools into the teaching and learning process. Participant perspectives on PAD within a blended learning environment are examined through the lenses of an ethic of care and authentic learning to uncover social justice pedagogy. Using a diffractive approach in a collaborative autoethnographic study, the possibilities, tensions and contradictions of using technology to enhance pedagogy are explored. Findings point to the importance of an Ethic of Care and authentic learning, in order to enhance a social justice pedagogy in PAD.
Within the context of the neoliberal managerialism that is pervading higher education in South Africa, academia is driven by a stringent set of prescriptions. Teaching within this environment can constrain opportunities for creativity and lateral thinking by students and staff alike. Student protests in 2015 and 2016 provided a challenge and provocation to academics to think about the transformational nature of their curriculum design, content and pedagogy. This paper explores the collaboration between three senior academics as they engaged in a process of professional academic development. This experience opened up generative spaces for them to think in new and creative ways about their teaching and curriculum design. A collaborative autoethnographic methodology, informed by a social constructivist approach, was used to explore their experience. The authors trace their interactions with different mediums and each other as 'a continuous process of making and unmaking' (Jackson & Mazzei 2013: 262). The lenses of Touch (Barad 2012), an Ethic of Care (Tronto 2013) and Slow Pedagogy (Bozalek 2017) were used to make meaning of their experiences. Key lessons they identified as enhancing their teaching were: 'space of (for) becoming', 'academic praxis', 'deconstructing and reconstructing entanglement', 'learning-by-modelling', and 'decolonising thinking and meaning-making'. This paper holds lessons that can inform curriculum development in higher education, especially in a Belinda Verster, Karen Collett & Carolien van den Berg 140 time when strong calls are mounting for 'disruptive shifts to revitalise higher education curricula' (Dhunpath & Amin 2019: 1).
In this paper, we explore the possibilities offered by sociomateriality for academics to engage with complex learning environments. The focus is on a longitudinal design-based research (DBR) study that includes an interdisciplinary, collaborative student project between Information Systems (IS) and Urban Planning (URP) from two different higher education institutions in Cape Town, South Africa. In the project, student groups collaborate to find potential digital innovations for sustainability challenges in their local communities. The aim is to position the student as an active community member with intimate knowledge of local sustainability challenges, and to develop social digital innovations for the benefit of local communities. We apply sociomateriality as a theoretical lens to rethink socio-technical learning environments and propose four pedagogical propositions of relationality, reflexivity, responsiveness, and recognition to guide the pedagogical decision-making when designing complex learning environments. We conclude the paper by mapping student reflections and experiences to the four pedagogical propositions to illustrate how the theoretical sociomaterial elements translate into the learning environment.
As academics, we are acutely aware of our responsibility in the design of our teaching and learning environment to instil principles of ethics, sustainability, agency and social justice. We are at the crossroad between the commodification of knowledge versus learning that steeped in well-being and innovative socio-ecological and or socio-technical transitions. These complexities prompted a Design-Based Research (DBR) project that commenced in 2020 to test and refine design principles that can facilitate an interdisciplinary, collaborative learning environment that exposes students to future challenges foregrounded in social justice perspectives of local voice, collaboration and co-design. A conceptual model informed by four pedagogical propositions of relationality, reflexivity, responsiveness and recognition is stipulated and nine design principles derived from these propositions are proposed. The overall purpose of this DBR project is to situate the student within a multifaceted learning experience that mimics the complexities associated with an interdisciplinary collaborative learning environment steeped in contemporary societal problems within a specific societal context. The ultimate aim of this project is to shift from interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary collaboration to explore a holistic approach to complex societal problems.
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